Well, he is back.

I guess I really should not say he is back, because I suppose it could be a woman.

At any rate, that wacko letter writer is back at it.

You probably remember my column a while back that told about some letters going out to the editor of the Albert Lea newspaper and the Albert Lea School Board. Those letters were purportedly signed by me, even with my title and address. And they were pretty nasty and totally untrue.

And you probably remember my column back in November that had to do with a letter that was sent to some Blue Earth businesses that was full of untruths about the election race for county commissioner.

Now there are more letters circulating around. They are a little different, but still supposedly signed by me and with my return address on the envelopes. My home address.

These new ones tell the recipients to drop off $800 in cash to my home or else I will write a nasty newspaper story about them. The letter says to not tell anyone about this, because I don’t want to get fired from my job as editor.

Now, I am not sure why the extortion is for only $800. I mean, why not make it an even $1,000?

Once again, I can’t really figure out the goal of the letter writer. Is he/she trying to embarrass me? Do they realize that newspaper editors don’t get paid big salaries so they feel sorry for me and are raising some spare cash for me?

I’m joking, but seriously I think that the wacko letter writer is, well, wacko. And in some kind of sicko sense of humor they think writing and sending out these letters is fun and the letter writer finds them to be hilarious.

They are only funny in a very demented, sick humor way. And it would take someone suffering from some severe mental illness to think they were even a tiny bit funny.

There was another letter this past week. This one was not signed by me, but it still had my return address on the envelope. The letter was mailed to a woman in Blue Earth, and again, it was a mighty sicko letter. The woman’s husband came to my door, because he wanted to see who lived at the return address on the envelope.

I answered the door, much to his surprise to see me there, and then he explained why he was there. And I explained the other letters to him.

Now, while I am not a handwriting expert, it doesn’t take much to see that the handwriting on the envelopes is identical on every one of them.

That is right. While the letters themselves were typed on a computer and then printed off, the letters were all hand addressed.

And there is more to this story.

About five or six years ago, some people got these same types of wacko letters, full of bizarre lies and signed by fake random people. Not always names, but something like “Some concerned friends.” Not only were the letters very similar in being very wacko, the envelopes were addressed with the very same handwriting.

Yeah, this has been going on for some time, as that was five or six years ago.

The letters have been turned over to law enforcement and they do have their theories on who this wacko might be.

I hope they do find the person pretty soon and do what they can with them, whether it is court, jail or mental health assistance.

Because, I am just getting pretty sick and tired of this.

It was one thing when the letters were going to people I know. But it got personal real fast when my name was on the letter so it looked like I was sending them out.

So far it is a puzzle as to how the wacko picks the people to send the letters to. Some are businesses, others are just regular people, seemingly chosen at random. But maybe there is a connection that can be discovered. I am hoping the authorities are getting close to solving the crime. Because it is a crime.

So if you receive one of these mystery wacko letters, let me or the County Sheriff know about it.

And if you wonder whether you really need to bring $800 in cash to my house, well the answer is no.

But if you have that extra cash lying around and wonder what to do with it, I suggest it would make a nice donation to the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History (aka Dinosaur Museum) in downtown Blue Earth.

See what I just did there? Turned something nasty, like these letters, into something nice, like making a donation to the museum.

We all need to try and turn bad things into good whenever we can.